In the summer of 1983, in the north of Italy, Elio Perlman, (Timothée Chalamet) a 17-year-old American spends his days in his family’s 17th century villa lazily transcribing music and flirting with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel). One day Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old graduate student working on his doctorate arrives as the annual summer intern tasked with helping Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by James Ivory, is based on the novel by André Aciman.

Now in her eighties, Agnès Varda remains the world’s most youthful filmmaker. Her latest nonfiction film is an inspired collaboration with JR, the mysterious French street artist. Like many of Varda’s works, Faces Places is a kind of travelogue in which the wonder of each locale visited is only as potent as the populace whose existence affects it. Their plan is simple: Varda and JR roam from place to place in JR’s truck, which is decorated to resemble a camera. In each place they visit, they meet people — coal miners, cheese makers, a Herculean farmer — and JR creates immense monochromatic portraits of them. Our endearing duo then affixes these portraits to various edifices all over town, quite literally, merging faces with places.

The landscape Varda and JR traverse becomes a visual record of their encounters. Among Faces Places’ most amusing refrains is Varda’s annoyance at JR’s refusal to remove his sunglasses, which she says reminds her of Jean-Luc Godard in the ’60s. The contrast between Varda’s French New Wave cohort, who represents her six-decade legacy, and JR, who embodies her vibrant present, speaks volumes about the scope of this amazing auteur’s durability and persistence of vision. “What emerges from them, and from the relationship between the 88-year-old filmmaker and the thirty-something photographer, is a poignant meditation on everything from self-revelation in the age of the selfie to change in rural France. This rich cross-generational exchange speaks to the persistence of French cinematic culture – Varda’s relationship with the pioneering filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is a recurring theme – while the doc itself is a delight, subtle, touching and entertaining.”
–The Globe and Mail

“Agnes Varda is almost 90 years old and she is still making films. That alone should be cause for dancing in the streets. But wait, there’s more: Agnes Varda is almost 90 years old and she is still making fantastic films. Searching, compassionate, provocative, funny, sad ones. This is one of them. You should see it, and then go dancing in the streets.”
RogerEbert.com

Swedish provocateur Ruben Östlund, the director of Force Majeure, returns with The Square, one of his most audacious pieces to date and winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes. A spot-on, no-holds-barred satire of the postmodern art world, the film follows Christian (Claes Bang), the self-centred, and hopelessly befuddled curator of Sweden’s most cutting- edge art museum. Christian’s attempts to promote his exhibits are deflected by personal misfortunes and culminate with a less than successful online campaign.

The Square is full of brilliant and dazzling set pieces, including an onstage interview gone awry and a performance piece gone even more
so. Östlund refuses to score easy points, outlining the challenges that face artists trying to examine the increasingly complex and absurd world we live in and dealing with the privileged members of the audience who consider art only as a social statement or financial investment.
The Square is a poignant satirical drama reflecting our times. Also starring Elizabeth Moss and Dominic West.

“The Square is darkly amusing, but it’s also bracingly honest in its absurdity, and that’s what kept me coming back to each one of its wonderfully knotty scenarios even months after seeing it.”
–The Atlantic

“Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund takes modern society’s temperature and finds it dangerously overheated in the madly ambitious and frequently disquieting The Square.”
The Hollywood Reporter

Known for her iconic look, wild-child antics, and scandalous private life, Hedy Lamarr was revered as “the most beautiful woman in the world” in 1940s tabloids. Yet, few know her true story; an undiscovered genius, she pioneered a secret communication system intended to guide US torpedoes during WWII, which became the basis for contemporary technologies like GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi. Though she would attempt to patent the idea, the US Navy thought she was better suited to selling war bonds and entertaining troops instead. Sadly, the name
Hedy Lamarr would later only be known for the inventor’s infamous six marriages, affairs, drug use, and obsession with plastic surgery. Throughout her life, Lamarr’s face proved to be a blessing and a curse, opening one door, but halting the possibility of opening another. Produced by Susan Sarandon, the film is a trailblazing tribute to women whose contributions have gone unrecognized and an inspiration for future generations of female inventors to come.

What makes “Bombshell” intriguing is not just Lamarr’s gift for invention, it’s also what a fiery individualist she was, someone who had no regrets about her eventful life (“You learn from everything”), not even its racy, tabloid elements.
The Chicago Tribune

Ivan Coyote is the award-winning author of eleven books, the creator of four short films, and has released three albums that combine storytelling with music. Ivan is a seasoned stage performer, and over the last twenty years has become an audience favourite at storytelling, writer’s, film, poetry, and folk music festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam.

The Globe and Mail newspaper called Coyote “a natural-born storyteller” and the Ottawa Xpress once said that “Coyote is to Canadian literature what kd lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture.”

Ivan often grapples with the complex and intensely personal issues of gender identity in their work, as well as topics such as family, class, social justice and queer liberation, but always with a generous heart, a quick wit, and the nuanced and finely-honed timing of a gifted raconteur. Ivan’s stories remind of us of our own fallible and imperfect humanity while at the same time inspiring us to change the world.

Ivan’s 11th book, Tomboy Survival Guide, was released in September 2016, by Arsenal Pulp Press.

Ivan Coyote was born and raised in a large Irish Catholic family in Whitehorse, Yukon, and learned the craft of storytelling while gathered around their grandmother’s kitchen table on long northern winter nights. Ivan is the award-winning author of nine collections of short stories (including one especially for young adult readers), one novel, a collection of essays, three screenplays and three CD’s, and a renowned live performer.

Coyote’s work tackles the difficult subjects of family, class, gender identity, and social justice, always with the silver tongue of a master storyteller, an eye for the beauty found in what makes us all human, and an ear for the hilarity of life and love. Ivan’s first love is telling stories to a live audience, and over the last nineteen years Ivan has become an audience favourite at writer’s, storytelling, poetry, spoken word, and music festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam.

Because much of their material grapples with life in between gender boxes, Ivan is also often asked to speak to labour activists, social justice advocates, university and high school students, health care providers and teachers all across the continent, and beyond. The Globe and Mail called Ivan “a natural-born storyteller” and Ottawa X Press said “Coyote is to CanLit what k.d. lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture.” Toronto Star praises Coyote’s “talent for sketching the bizarre in the everyday”, and Quills Magazine says Ivan has a “distinctive and persuasive voice, a flawless sense of pacing, and an impeccable sense of story.”

Having outdrank, outsmoked, and outlived all of his contemporaries in his off-the-map desert town, fiercely independent 90-year-old atheist Lucky (the late Harry Dean Stanton in his final role) finds himself unexpectedly thrust into a late-in-life journey of self exploration. Living alone in the blistering Arizona heat, he slopes along through life, occupying his time by walking around the dusty streets of his speck of a southwestern town. Lucky whiles away his time in a fixed routine that starts with yoga at home and breakfast at a diner, moves on to crossword puzzles and TV shows, and ends in a bar among life-worn regulars. (One of them, played by David Lynch, is grieving over the loss of his pet tortoise.) It’s never clear what Lucky has done with his life, but, with the first sign of failing health, he grows reminiscent, dredging up old regrets in gruffly sentimental monologues. Lucky makes for an incredible showcase for Stanton’s unique mastery of the wry, cantankerous wisdom that became his trademark. The film is a cinematic love letter to its legendary leading man, as well as a deeply felt meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality, and human connection.

“The late, great Stanton gets the perfect send-off playing an atheist loner kicking his own mortality down the road like a tin can that got in his way. His character may not believe in God. But what kind of fool doesn’t believe in Harry Dean Stanton?”
Rolling Stone

The sultry Gloria Grahame won a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful. She appeared in films alongside Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, and a bevy of other icons. Her star blazed brightly then faded quickly, but she did not disappear. How Grahame spent her later years is the subject of this beautiful — and rare — ode to life after fame. Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool features Annette Bening as Grahame and Jamie Bell (Nicholas Nicholby, Billy Elliot), as her lover Peter Turner, a working-class English actor. Drawing on Turner’s memoir of the same name, director Paul McGuigan fashions a moving narrative that embraces the high and lows of the erstwhile Hollywood star’s time spent living in Liverpool in the 1970s.
As the two embark on their romance, we follow them from England to Los Angeles, from stage to hospital, and from laughter to tears. Unorthodox and sincere, the film is the kind of showbiz love story seldom depicted onscreen.

“There is no denying the emotional force that this film develops, and for that, we can credit talented filmmakers and two stars working at the height of their powers.”
–The Hollywood Reporter

“What an astounding actress Annette Bening is. And she’s at her very best playing Gloria Grahame, a screen siren of the 1940s and 1950s, who faced a health crisis in her final days with the help of a new love (a terrific Jamie Bell).”
– Rolling Stone

Samuel Maoz’s debut feature, Lebanon, was set during the 1982 Lebanon War, and shot almost entirely inside of a tank. Foxtrot, his second feature, steps away from that fevered claustrophobia to tell another maddening story of war and conflict, but this one on a much broader canvas. Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) and Dafna (Sarah Adler) experience gut-wrenching grief when army officials show up at their home to
announce the death of their son, Jonathan. Unable to find any solace in the well-meaning condolences of their extended family, or in the empty patriotic platitudes of bureaucrats, Michael spirals into anger only to subsequently experience one of life’s unfathomable twists — a twist that can only be rivaled by the surreal military experiences of his son. Foxtrot examines both the strength and the absurdity of military service from several points of view. Moving from the grieving parents’ apartment to the remote military post where Jonathan was stationed, Maoz shows us precisely how much damage can ensue when young soldiers, barely able to tell their toe from a trigger, experience boredom, privation, and loneliness. Although there is a terrible tragedy at the heart of the film, Foxtrot contains many
moments laced with mordant humour, irony, and sincere emotional connection.

“Brilliantly constructed with a visual audacity that serves the subject rather than the other way around, this is award-winning filmmaking on a fearless level.”
– Variety

A comedy wrapped around a tragedy, The Party unfolds in real time in a house in London in the present day. Janet is hosting an intimate gathering of friends to celebrate her promotion to Shadow Minister of Health in the party of opposition. Her husband, Bill, seems preoccupied. As their friends arrive, some of who have their own dramatic news to share, the soirée gradually unravels. An announcement by Bill provokes a series of revelations that rapidly escalate into all-out confrontation. As people’s illusions about themselves and each other go up in smoke, along with the canapés, The Party becomes a night that began with champagne but ends with blood on the floor. Directed and written by Sally Potter.
Starring: Patricia Clarkson, Kristen Scott Thomas and Timothy Spall.

“A deliciously heightened, caviar-black comedy that sets up its brittle, bourgeois characters like bowling pins and gleefully knocks them down in 71 minutes flat.”

– Variety “Observant and smart…. It plays out in real time with elegance and dispatch, cantering up to a cheeky punch line twist which leaves you laughing over the final credits.”
–The Guardian

About King's Theatre

Get comfortable in our intimate 220-seat theatre…
air conditioned in summer, toasty warm in winter.
Located in the heart of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada…
a vibrant, culturally rich, unique place to live.